BAGHDAD BUSH

"Bush left after night fell to return to Washington. The plane left at a steep angle with its lights out and the shades drawn." [The last sentence is also a description of the Bush presidency.]

"No, I didn't bring a turkey this time. But thank you for the warm welcome...and for getting me safely into the Green Zone.
Does anyone see any WMD? (Giggling)
Trent Lott and Pat Buchanan said that my coming to Baghdad was 'a brilliant move' and 'brilliant'. Thank you Trent and Pat. I hope this visit increases my POLL....numbers.
Mr. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, Iraq is now in your hands.
If your country wants peace and democracy, then it will get peace and democracy.
The U.S. will NOT cut and run from your oil or from our strategic position.
If the terrorists were not here before my Shock and Awe attack, they are here now. I can't undo history.
The terrorists must be killed here before they can kill anywhere else.
You have my word and the word of the United States of America.
O.K. I have to go now.
I'm going to have a hands-on-look at some camels.
I'm bringing a few back to my Crawford ranch.
Thank you."

WHY WE MEET AT CAMP DAVID

We meet at
Camp David
To discuss
Military
Strategy
To make
Some adjustments
In our
War
To win the
Hearts and minds
Of the people…
To win the
November election…
To convince the American public that
We have everything under control…
To win the
War on Terror…
To achieve
Victory…
To keep the
Well-oiled
War Machine
Well-fed and
Well-funded…
To keep our
Friends and
Corporations always
Happy...
We meet at
Camp David.

ODE ON ANN COULTER

Groups representing millions of Americans-veterans, labor, women, students, religionists, business, and others-asked to meet with President Bush before the invasion. The American Caesar turned them all down. He knew it all. Then he blew it all and millions of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Americans are paying a severe price for this pig-headed corporate militarist.
Ralph Nader



Cute Ann Coulter
(Verbal adulterer?)
Gives annoying sarcastic butts and blows
To all the left-wing liberal nuts and crows.
Cute Ann Coulter scoffs and laughs
At all those liberal kooks who
Give her the cold shoulder.
Cute Ann Coulter writes her books &
Sells them with her awful looks.

IEDS AND PLENIPEDES

IED.
Intermittent-Explosive-Disorder.
IED.
Improvised-Explosive-Device.
Both exist in Iraq.
Both were produced by the
Intermittent-PrE-Emptive-Explosive-Decider-Long War President George W. Bush.
And what about that millipede with 662 legs?
Now here's some other ("explosive") news to assuage our irritated minds and stressful souls:

The world's leggiest species -- a millipede that has up to 750 legs -- has been spotted for the first time in 80 years.
The last time Illacme plenipes was seen was in 1926, when it was discovered living in a tiny habitat measuring just 0.8 square kilometres (0.31 sq. miles) in San Benito County, California.
The adult females were nearly twice as long as the adult males, coming in at 33.20mm (1.31 inches) and bearing either 662 or 666 legs, arrayed on 170 or 171 segments. The adult males measured up to 16.15mm (0.64 inches) and up to 402 legs, on 105 segments.
There are around 10,000 species of millipedes, one of the world's oldest terrestrial animals.
Plenipedes can have up to 750 legs, making them the closest to having the 1,000 that millipedes according to folklore are supposed to have.

LATE NIGHT CONVERSATION BETWEEN GEORGE AND LAURA BUSH

LB: George, I have some good news and some bad news. Which do you want to hear first?
GWB: Give me the good news first; I like to save bad news for last...you know, like my Iraq war and Katrina (Giggling).
LB: O.K. Here's the good news: Both of our daughters are lesbians.
GWB: O.K. And what's the bad news?
LB: I think I'm one too.
GWB: Bad...very bad news. {But GW is thinking: 'Well, maybe not. This could be the opening Condi and I have been waiting for.'}
LB: So George, what do we do now"
GWB: Give me the phone. I need to call My brain.
LB: Call who?
GWB: You know...My Brain...Karl Rove.
LB: And then what?
GWB: Karl will think of something. He always does.
LB: O.K. Give me the phone.
GWB: Who are you calling this time of night?
LB: My bit**... Ann Coulter.
GWB: Holy s***!

NO BERRIES PLEASE

Lieberry or Lyeberry?
Is this where there are berries of lye or where berries lie?
Neither.
I continue to hear many people pronounce this word as if it contained berries.
It has no berries.
Bury the thought.
Better yet...start practicing the correct pronunciation of this word.
Drop the berry sound.
Get rid of the berries.
Say:
Brrrr...air...ee...
Brrr...air...ee...
Lie-brair-ee.
LIBRARY!
Thank you.

SAY I R A N

Picture yourself as a pugilist.
Picture yourself as a pugilist getting pummeled to the pulp.
You are embarrassed.
You are tired.
You are feeling very lousy, indeed.
Are you going to do something nice...or something awful...if you can?
Now picture yourself as a president or king or dictator.
Then picture yourself as President George W. Bush.
How would you feel?
How would you act?
How might you react…
If you were getting pummeled to the pulp...
In the polls...
By your own political party...
By the war that you started and are now losing...
Are you going to do something nice...or something awful...if you can?
Now say just one word...
IRAN!

REMEMBERING HOW ENRON HELPED ELECT LONG WAR PRESIDENT BUSH

That Lay was instrumental in Bush’s rise to the presidency is indisputable. Since 1993, Lay and top Enron executives donated nearly $2 million to Bush. Lay also personally donated $326,000 in soft money to the Republican Party in the three years prior to Bush’s presidential bid, and he was one of the Republican “pioneers” who raised $100,000 in smaller contributions for Bush. Lay’s wife donated $100,000 for inauguration festivities.
As governor, Bush did what Enron wanted, cutting taxes and deregulating utilities. The deregulation ideology, which George W. long had adopted as gospel, allowed dubious bookkeeping and other acts of chicanery that shocked Wall Street and drove a $60-billion company, seventh on the Fortune 500 list, into bankruptcy.
This emerging scandal makes Whitewater seem puny in comparison; clearly there ought to be at least as aggressive a congressional inquiry into the connection between the Bush administration and the Enron debacle. Facts must be revealed, beginning with the content of Lay’s private meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney to create the administration’s energy policy.

The Enron Story Everyone Is Missing: The Bush-Ken Lay Connection

Written by truthdig.com/Robert Scheer
Thursday, 01 June 2006

WE ARE THE KILLERS: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE W. BUSH

For it is not the small-scale Haditha atrocity that should be compared to My Lai: it is the entire Iraq War itself. The whole operation from its inception in high-level mendacity to its execution in blood-soaked arrogance, folly, greed and incompetence is a war crime of almost unfathomable proportions: a My Lai writ large, a My Lai every single day, year after year after year.

The Marines who killed at Haditha were veterans of the much larger atrocity at Fallujah the year before. There they took part in one of the most savage demolitions of a city since World War II. Eight weeks of relentless bombing was followed by a cut-off of the city's water, electricity and food supplies. a clear war crime under the Geneva Conventions. More than two-thirds of the city's residents, some 200,000 people, fled the coming inferno, refugees in their own land. Those who remained were considered fair game in the house-by-house ravaging that followed. Among the Americans' first targets were the city's hospitals and clinics, as U.S. officers freely admitted to the New York Times: another blatant war crime. They were destroyed or shut down, with medical staff killed or imprisoned, to prevent bad publicity about civilian casualties from reaching the outside world, the officers said. Later, an investigation by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government found credible evidence of the use of chemical weapons against the city; yet another war crime. Up to 6,000 people were killed in the attack, most of them civilians.

Like Abu Ghraib, Haditha is not an aberration by a few "bad apples" but the emblem of a wider, systemic crime, the natural fruit of an outlaw regime that has made aggressive war, torture, indefinite detention, "extrajudicial killing," rendition and concentration camps official national policy. This moral rot is Bush's true historical legacy.

The Line Of Atrocity -
From The White House
To Haditha
By Chris Floyd


The Long War President’s wars have endangered the national security of the United States of America.
George W. Bush’s wars and tax cuts for the rich and super-rich have drained the Treasury of America and her children.
America’s military power has been drained and emasculated by George W. Bush’s wars.
Afghanistan is becoming a disaster. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are getting bolder and stronger---not weaker.
Respect for America has been drained by this Long War President’s wars and his indifference to Geneva Convention Protocols and other International Laws.
The health and welfare of the earth has been endangered by George W. Bush’s countless orders to kill environmental (protection) regulations.
The health and welfare of the earth has been endangered by George W. Bush’s mindless indifference to factual and scientific data on the environment and global warming.
The mindset of George W. Bush is:
"Let tomorrow's children and leaders clean up the planet and my mess in Iraq. I won't be here anyway."
Traditional allies of America have been alienated by George W. Bush’s dictatorial-like reign.
George W. Bush’s disregard to the opinions of mankind has endangered not only America…
BUT THE ENTIRE PLANET!
Now is the time for an extraterrestrial civilization to intervene and save America and the planet…from
GEORGE W. BUSH!
BUT FIRST, VOTE THE REPUBLICANS OUT IN NOVEMBER!

Mad Plato

IRAN IS ON THE TABLE (THE CHOPPING BLOCK!)

“Representatives of the five Permanent Members of the Council (Britain, China, France, the Russian Federation, and the United States) plus Germany very well could finalize an agreement on Iran's nuclear program that makes UN Charter- and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty-violating demands on Iran. Should this or any subsequent meeting among these powers produce a draft Security Council resolution that calls upon Iran to surrender its "inalienable right" under Article IV.1 of the NPT "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discriminati on" (1970),[1] along with enforceable, Chapter VII-type penalties in case Iran resists their orders, the UN Charter and the NPT will have been overthrown, and the current crisis greatly heightened all in the name of maintaining ‘international peace and security.’"

“What responses Britain, France, Germany, and especially China and Russia summon will ultimately go a long way toward deciding whether the American crimes of Afghanistan and Iraq are extended to Iran.”
From “Iran: a Manufactured Crisis”
By DAVID PETERSON/counterpunch.com/6-1-06

Well, the votes are in and here are the results:

“Six world powers -- including all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Thursday agreed on a plan for resuming negotiations with Iran -- but only if Tehran agrees to suspend its manufacture of nuclear fuel. "We urge Iran to take the positive path... which would bring significant benefits to Iran," said British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who announced the agreement.”
CNN.com/9:31 P.M./6-1-06

GEORGE W. BUSH WANTS A WAR WITH IRAN?


“The Bush administration has no intention of peacefully resolving the nuclear dispute with Iran. They have consistently blocked all attempts by Iran to negotiate in good faith or to establish diplomatic channels for discussion.”
“Controlling the oil resources of the Caspian Basin and removing regional rivals to Israel remain the fundamental goals of Bush's global resource war. This makes a military confrontation with Iran inevitable. It is absurd to expect the Bush administration will seriously negotiate when their final purpose is regime change.”
“U.S. carrier groups are already moving to the Gulf and the finishing touches are being put on the battle plans."


1 The IAEA has consistently said that there is "no evidence" that Iran has a nuclear weapons program or is diverting nuclear material from its research.
2 Iran has been in full compliance with all its treaty obligations for 3 years although it has undergone the most intensive inspection regime in the history of the IAEA.
3 The UN Security Council reaffirmed Iran's "inalienable right" to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and did not order Iran to suspend nuclear enrichment as was falsely reported in the news.
4 The United States has violated its obligations under the NPT by developing a new regime of "bunker busting" low yield nuclear weapons.
5 That the United States is violating the UN Charter by unilaterally threatening a sovereign nation which is not in breach of any UN resolution.
Mike Whitney/”Endgaming Iran”/counterpunch.com/6-1-06


IS THE UNITED STATES REALLY GOING TO INVADE Iran? Read this below. What do you think readers?

"Former CIA analyst and Presidential advisor Ray McGovern, fresh from his heated public confrontation with Donald Rumsfeld, fears that staged terror attacks across Europe and the US are probable in order to justify the Bush administration's plan to launch a military strike against Iran, which he thinks will take place in June or July.
Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, McGovern was asked about the timetable for war in Iran and said that behind the diplomatic smokescreen, the final chess pieces were being moved into position.
"There is already one carrier task force there in the Gulf, two are steaming toward it at the last report I have at least - they will all be there in another week or so."
"The propaganda has been laid, the aircraft carriers are in place, it doesn't take much to fly the bombers out of British and US bases - cruse missiles are at the ready, Israel is egging us on," said McGovern.
"The turmoil caused by such an action would lead the US to tap its so-called 'mini-nuke' arsenal said McGovern, "opening a new Pandora's box of chaos."
McGovern highlighted President Bush's all time record low approval ratings as a reason for launching an attack on Iran to again whip up false patriotic fervour.
"I can see Karl Rove saying, 'look what you need to do is become a war president again, get us involved with something pretty big here and then strut around and say you can't vote for a bunch of Democrats to pull the rug out from under me while there's a war going on'."

"McGovern entertained the notion that western governments and intelligence hierarchies could potentially stage terror attacks in Europe and the US either before or after an invasion of Iran.
"I would say even probable because they need some proximate cause, some casus belli to justify really unleashing things on Iran....I would put very little past this crew - their record of dissembling and disingenuousness is unparalleled.'
McGovern said that Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld, fearing impeachment and Enron-style criminal proceedings, are urging President Bush to launch a war in order to create a climate unconducive to lengthy investigations and impeachment proceedings."
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | June 1 2006

A TON OF COFFEE AND A GALLON OF GAS

I remember the “energy crisis” of 1973.
I had already graduated from college with my degree in English (and my minor in Education).
I had gotten a teaching job right out of college, but I resigned after the first semester.
It was a situation where the “whites” were fighting the “browns”.
It was the time of Chicano power.
Parents came to school with guns.
The school was patrolled by policemen. Classrooms were locked.
I didn’t understand what all of the fighting was about, so I left. I wanted to be a teacher, not a referee.
That was 1971.
I “slipped into” a quiet one-room cottage in the mountains.
A creek was right behind my cottage.
It was winter.
I burned incense, listened to Cat Stevens and read a lot. My only companion was a black and white cat named Sam.
I waited for the spring to arrive and melt the frozen creek.
I lived on my final check from the school where I had taught.
But when winter was finished so was my money.
I got a job as a garbage collector.
The gig was hard, but the hours were short.
I started around 5:30 A.M. and finished at 1:00 P.M.
The driver (Don) was a soft-spoken guy in his early twenties. My co-worker on the back of the diesel-puffing garbage truck was a jolly Mexican in his late forties. He liked to point out the houses where he sometimes saw ladies wearing their nightgowns; but I never saw any ladies in such garb.
One cold and drizzly morning a man came out of his house and poured each of us a shot of whiskey. That hit the spot. My numb fingers inside my holy gloves became a little warmer.
I worked on the garbage truck until it got so cold that I couldn’t take it anymore, and I headed for Florida.
After I got tired of Florida I hitched back to Colorado.
I “landed” in Red River, New Mexico after a kid in a blue Karma Ghia picked me up in Amarillo, Texas.
It was a guitar that I was holding that got me the ride. I couldn’t even play it. I paid a $100 for it thinking that I might learn to play someday. I even gave it a name: April. I forget why. Maybe it was because of a woman that I had met with that name.
Anyway, Jim and I rented a small cabin and began looking for work in Red River the next day.
We became painters.
As I painted I listened to the ongoing Nixon impeachment hearings. They went on and on and on.
That was 1973.
I really didn’t feel affected by the “energy-oil” crisis because I didn’t drive, and I was living at a very low subsistence level.
I didn’t earn much money and I spent even less.
I remember one time I bumped into a friend at a local bar. I paid him with a poem I had written to buy me a beer. It was a good poem, but the beer was better.
Those were romantic days for me. I didn’t have responsibilities or attachments...I was just “afoot and lighthearted”.
I met some interesting people.
Then I moved on.
Geopolitics and I were as far apart as the moon and the stars.
I loved those days…Those good, old days.

IT'S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!

DEAR GEORGE W. BUSH

YOU DID NOT PULL THE TRIGGERS THAT MURDERED THE MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN HADITHA, BUT AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY BULLET THAT WAS FIRED OR WILL BE FIRED TODAY AND TOMORROW.
You are culpable.
You are guilty.
It is your war.
You are ultimately responsible for the military and every soldier.
Stop your unnecessary war before it kills more innocent civilians.
YOUR WAR IS A FAILURE!
Bring the troops home!
America and the world do not want any more of your democracy spread.
Death AND Destruction are being spread...
Not DEMOCRACY!.

HYDROGEN AND THE SWEET SCIENCE

Eat, eat and eat those sweets!
Some new research has shown how certain bacteria can produce hydrogen when these bacteria are “fed” waste products from candy production.
How sweet it will be if our cars can operate because of the sweets we have just eaten.
Simple processes that produce a complicated product are cost-effective.
The Sheiks and oil CEOs will probably want to shut down the candy factories.
Dentists will be ecstatic.
The sweet science is no longer just boxing.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 24.05.2006

Sweet success for pioneering hydrogen energy project

Bacteria that can munch through confectionery could be a valuable source of non-polluting energy in the years ahead, new research has shown.

In a feasibility study funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, bioscientists at the University of Birmingham have demonstrated that these bacteria give off hydrogen gas as they consume high-sugar waste produced by the confectionery industry.
The hydrogen has been used to generate clean electricity via a fuel cell (1). Looking to the future, it could also be used to power the hydrogen-fuelled road vehicles of tomorrow.

MEMORIAL DAY AND WAR

Controlled, universal disarmament is the imperative of our time. The demand for it by the hundreds of millions whose chief concern is the long future of themselves and their children will, I hope, become so universal and so insistent that no man, no government anywhere, can withstand it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. ~Ernest Hemingway

If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons. ~Pope John Paul II

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war. ~Otto Von Bismark

If we don't end war, war will end us. ~H.G. Wells, Things to Come, 1935

RAISINETTS POPCORN AND THE DA VINCI CODE

I saw The Da Vinci Code last night.
I fell asleep once or twice.
As usual the popcorn and Raisinetts were devoured before the movie began.
Anyway, I didn't recognize most events in the movie that were in Dan Brown's book.
I don't blame Ron Howard.
I read the book almost a year ago, but the memory’s hard drive isn't downloading as well as it should.
I'll give the film a B-.
I didn't expect much more than what I saw.
This is the first film I have seen in any theater since I went to see Master and Commander (when I fell asleep more than once or twice).
Maybe Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis could have played the part of Tom Hanks, but Hanks gave a good performance.
I look forward to watching the movie based on the more action-filled Angels and Demons.
Hire Tommy Lee Jones for this movie.

MELTING FACES

I know that my dish satellite was having reception problems.
But I still found the melting faces disturbing.
It was game two of the NBA East Finals.
The Miami Heat vs. the Detroit Pistons.
The scoreboard looked normal.
Ghosts.
Demons.
The Paranormal.
Poltergeist.
Aliens.
I am not that superstitious.
It was just my satellite dish…
Melting faces...

BLAIRING AND BUSHING

It was rehearsed and patent pabulum posing as sincere contrition.
His mission is still to complete the mission...
complete the mission...complete the mission...when the Iraqis
Stand up...stand up...stand up then the U.S. will stand down (and lay down more and more of the dead.)
The pundits keep saying, "Well...what if Iraq succeeds...and does become a democracy?"
George W. Bush would then be a hero and not what he is right now.
But what else can conquering kings and presidents say and do?
They cannot stand in front of the camera eye that is peering at the world's billions and admit any mistakes.
They came, they saw and they confabulated.

SOME PET PEEVES

1. Drivers who you almost hit because they don’t wait to make their turns, but turn right in front of you!
2. People who don’t replace the empty toilet roll in the bathroom!
3. People who don’t clean their body hair off of the soap bar!
4. People who don’t close the shower curtain after showering!
5. People who don’t screw lids on tight!
6. People who don’t clean up after they eat!
7. People who say---“Hi. How are you?”---but then just keep walking without waiting for your reply!
8. People who are always complaining!
9. People who snort and clean their nasal passages in close proximity!
10. People who don’t flush after they do their business!

IRAQ DECONSTRUCTION AND GEORGE W'S PALACE

How the Bush Administration Deconstructed Iraq
By Michael Schwartz
TomDispatch.com


"The image of the Bush administration in Iraq as a bumbling giant, overwhelmed by the destructive forces within Iraqi society, is a pernicious misrepresentation. A close look at the facts on the ground demonstrates that the American occupation itself has been the primary destructive force in Iraq as well as the direct or ultimate source of the bulk of the violence; that the American military, in its zealous pursuit of the resistance, still generates much destruction; and that American reconstruction efforts have -- through greed, corruption, and incompetence -- only deepened the infrastructural crisis."

"The American presence in Iraq continues to be a force for deconstruction."

"Most of the death, destruction, and disorganization in the country has, at least in its origins, been a direct consequence of U.S. efforts to forcibly institute an economic and social revolution, while using overwhelming force to suppress resistance to this project. Certainly, the insurgency, the ethno-religious jihadists, and the criminal gangs have all contributed to the descent of Iraqi cities and towns into chaos, but their roles have been secondary and in many cases reactive. The engine of deconstruction was -- and remains -- the U.S.-led occupation."


Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous internet sites, including Tomdispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones, and ZNet; and in print in Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.


Here is the construction taking place in Iraq:
It's called George W's Palace.
Price tag: Half Billion Dollars!
Your tax dollars at work.
The biggest embassy on the planet.
It doesn't sound like the U.S. is pulling out of Iraq any time soon.
The war in Iraq wasn't for liberation.
But you know this.
The war was to establish America's influence and presence (NOT PRESENTS!) in Iraq.
Oil was a big reason for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But you know this too.
With Iran and Syria nearby, the United States will have a better chance to conquer these other countries when necessary.
And China is not that far away.

THEY KILL PEOPLE THEN SAY I'M SORRY (Child in Iraq whose parents were killed)

What a joke.

After almost 5 years George W. Bush is making some hard right turns.

Call them Republican Ruses.

To bolster the Republican base (that is currently distancing itself from the Long War President), George W. Bush finally wants to secure the U.S.-Mexican Border.

How long was Rip Van Winkle asleep?

This president has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to the security of the borders.

He doesn't think about bin Laden any longer, so the Long War President has plenty of time to think about the security of America's borders.

But this latest stunt is just more window (bandage) dressing to divert the public's attention away from the tragic and devastating debacle in Iraq.

Here is information that’s not in your newspapers, or on your TVs and radios:

“Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.”
“The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves. ‘Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you,’ warned one of four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in the city of Baquba, in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad. He offered chocolate to one of her children to try to find out the names of the men in the family.”

Weekend Edition/www.CounterPunch.org

May 20 / 21, 2006

Ethnic Cleansing Takes Hold
Iraq is Disintegrating

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Khanaqin, North-East Iraq

“Iraq has had to wait over 5 months after the
December 15 elections for a government finally to be formed. The US intervened with local Iraqi parties to overturn the democratic vote of the United Iraqi Alliance for Ibrahim Jaafari. It got instead a long-time member of the Damascus politburo of the then-radical Islamic Dawa Party, which helped form Hizbullah in Lebanon. Nuri al-Maliki has finally been elected prime minister, but has not presented ministers for any of the key three cabinet posts having to do with national security.”

”Wouldn't you think that addressing national security might be the first priority? He has given us a minister of Tourism but not a Minister of Defense or a Minister of the Interior?”

”Of course, it probably doesn't matter that much. The Sunni Arab guerrilla movement will only redouble its efforts to overthrow this new government. And, there is no evidence that the troops and security forces of the new government can effectively curb the guerrillas, even if they had new leadership.”

There are now four distinct wars going on in Iraq simultaneously
1) The Sunni Arab guerrilla war to expel US troops from the Sunni heartland
2) The militant Shiite guerrilla war to expel the British from the south
3) The Sunni-Shiite civil war
4) The Kurdish war against Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk province, and the Arab and Turkmen guerrilla struggle against the encroaching Peshmerga (the Kurdish militia).

Informed Comment/www.juancole.com

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion/Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!